


To be loved in return

by fifthnorthumberland



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Bisexual B. J. Hunnicutt, Bisexual Hawkeye Pierce, F/M, Getting Together, M/M, Multi, Nonmonogamous Relationship, Polyamory, Post-War, its not relevant to the story but Peg is bi as well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-05
Updated: 2018-03-05
Packaged: 2019-03-27 07:01:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13875633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fifthnorthumberland/pseuds/fifthnorthumberland
Summary: B. J. doesn't mean to keep them, but over months of sharing every waking minute with one Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, he's got a collection of letters addressed to his friend written in moments when he feels like he's about to do something he shouldn't, heart so tender he's afraid it'll leak out of him and everyone will see. Once he's back home, Peg convinces him that maybe he should send those letters to their rightful owner.





	To be loved in return

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first M*A*S*H fic and it just sprang out of me, so forgive anything that's not quite elegant. The title is inspired by eden ahbez's "Nature Boy", which reminds me of Hawkeye so much. Hope you enjoy!
> 
> "There was a boy  
> A very strange, enchanted boy  
> They say he wandered very far  
> Very far, over land and sea  
> A little shy and sad of eye  
> But very wise was he
> 
> And then one day  
> One magic day he passed my way  
> While we spoke of many things  
> Fools and Kings  
> This he said to me:
> 
> "The greatest thing you'll ever learn  
> Is just to love and be loved in return" "

It starts with a letter that he knows no one will ever read. “Dear Hawkeye, I might be losing it (finally), but I think I’m in love with you,” it starts. He intended to burn it after finishing it, but B. J.’s a bit sentimental so he kept it under the pile of letters from home he kept in a box by his cot. It’s his way of staying faithful to both his friend and his wife without betraying or denying himself, or the truth.

Then, however, he didn’t stop loving Hawkeye, and so he didn’t stop writing to him. It started as a letter, but then it’s more a journal addressed to Hawkeye. “Today, I pranked Frank and you laughed so hard, you fell off your cot. Beautiful.” and “I’m so grateful Sidney has been around what with you having these nightmares. I know Colonel Potter had him come over. I don’t know how to keep a straight face and tell you it’s nothing, it’ll be alright, when you’re so scared and I just want to hold you. Christ, Hawk, sometimes I don’t know how you do it with no one but your dad at home. I suppose that’s a bit selfish of me to expect you to go on by yourself…”.

It’s a few dozen pages by the time the war ends and B. J. takes them home in the same box as his wife’s letters. He still doesn’t know how he’ll ever manage without Hawkeye again. He knows he can’t recover his self from before the war, can’t reconcile both versions of himself. That B. J. was left in Kimpo. Or maybe at the orientation training. Or maybe the first time he lost a patient on the stretcher. Or maybe when he realized his love for the family he found at the 4077th, the family that Hawkeye had spent a lot of time and effort and care into making for months before B. J. had even arrived –and then somehow worked BJ into it seamlessly, that this love was what carried him through from day to day just as much as the family he’d made for himself and had left at home in Mill Valley.

One night, after weeks of getting to know his daughter enough that now she knows the stranger that’s been putting her to bed is her father, weeks of sleeping fitfully in a too-soft mattress with his almost too-soft wife, Peggy corners him in the kitchen. He once said to Nurse Donovan that he’d be the one to do that when his wife bottled up her feelings. He’d nudge her until it all came out. He’s almost forgotten about that when Peg hands him a mug to dry and asks “Do you want to talk about it?”

“It” could be anything. The nightmares, the lack of sleep, getting used to full meals and fresh fruit and milk in his coffee, to having a young daughter who barely knew him, to having his wife back and wondering what she’d been up to for 2 years even though he knew she tried to tell him as best as she could. “It” could be the war. What he’d witnessed and didn’t write to her, then, because it was too hard to think about bringing the violence to a place where he could be in peace when he came back. Didn’t want Peggy and Erin and their home tainted by the useless suffering he saw. “It” could be the other thing he didn’t write about. “It” could be the pile of unsent letters at the bottom of a box full of her handwriting.

“I- uh. I do. I want to talk about it, Peg, and we will, soon. Just. I don’t think I know how to just yet.” he tells her as she hands him a wet glass.

“Alright.” she says, after a moment. “I just miss you, is all.” And B. J.’s heart breaks a little at that. He puts the dried glass down and holds her. They both cry, almost silently, her hands still in the dishwater and his around her waist.

-

He hasn’t looked at the letters he wrote Hawkeye, never poured himself over reading them because he remembers most of them by heart. Sometimes they were easy, lighthearted things that flew from thought to page like notes of laughter or the sound of crickets on a hot, blissfully dull day.

Other times, though... Well, there were times when he wrote to remember, but also so he wouldn’t break down and do things he would regret. Or simply so he wouldn’t sink under the weight of the loneliness of loving someone you shouldn’t love.

Sometimes, it was his way of telling himself that he wasn’t being cruel for outwardly giving the impression he was ignorant of Hawkeye’s feelings for him. He knew. Of course he knew. He felt Hawkeye’s affection like heat from lava slowly pouring all over camp. He wasn’t a fool, even for love.

He finds them right where he left them and he knows Peggy hasn’t read them, but he also knows that, somehow, without even knowing of their existence, she knows the nature of their content.

Maybe she saw it when Hawkeye came to visit them for two weeks over their first summer back from Korea and B. J. had lit up, transformed into someone he felt more comfortable being than who she’d been sleeping next to since he came back. He saw how lonely she looked when she said she’d put Erin to bed so they could stay out on the porch to chat. How she came back to say goodnight and kissed them both on the cheek, tired, or maybe sad.

B. J. doesn’t want to be cruel or selfish about this. He knows that, yes, this is about him, because he’s the one who has the most to gain from this, if it all works out. _Dear_ _God, may it all work out._ It’s about him, but it’s also about being himself, and being honest, and he does it – in part – because that’s the kind of husband he wants to be, that’s the kind of freedom he wishes that Peg feels with him, too, and it’s the kind of father he wants to be for Erin. Denying oneself the good things one wants never leads to anything good and healthy, he knows.

This may be selfish, but he needs to reassure Peggy that he’s always loved her. All through the war, and through coming back, and through loving Hawkeye, and through every mistake. He tries his best, doesn’t he, to be good? Oh, how he misses the gentle reassurances of Father Mulcahy as he fishes the box out of the closet.

He’s nervous, of course, but they’re at a crossroads and B. J.’s worried they’ll stay stuck here if he doesn’t fess up. Peg’s sitting in the middle of their double bed, brushing her hair, lovely in her nightgown, and B. J. smiles timidly, awkwardly, feeling almost as far from his wife in this moment as when he was thousands of miles from her. To hide something from someone you love, someone who thinks they know you wholly and deeply, you have to hide away a part of yourself. He's lasted just about as long as he could, hiding, and he's glad it's almost over.

Peggy takes the box and looks up at him quizzically, and frowns, confused, when she sees his nervous face. “What’s this?” she asks, weighing the box in her hands after putting down the brush.

“They’re your letters. And some of mine. Some I didn’t send.”

It’s not enough, it’s not gentle, it’s imperfect and B. J. wants to be so much better for his lovely, intelligent and generous wife who’s sacrificed so much for him already. He forces out the rest.

“I want to tell you about some of it tonight, if you want.”

He hopes she understands what he’s asking. _Are you ready?_

She puts the box down and looks at him with a tenderness that makes his insides shake a little.

“Why don’t you sit down and tell me about it?”

He sits down, scooting over to her side, and holds her hands.

“When I was at the MASH, I changed a lot. I think you noticed.” She nods, acknowledging.

“Sometimes, though, it feels like I didn’t become someone else, just…more myself. Does that make sense?”

“I’m not sure I know what you mean. But B. J., I loved you when left and I love you now, as you are. I changed too, you know." And he does know. She's more independent in a way that tugs at his ego, but that makes his heart feel safer.

"We grow! Like Erin grew while you were away, we grw too. It’s normal. Don’t regret growing, hon.”

“I don’t regret anything I did over there, Peg, but I wish I could have grown beside you. But that’s not exactly the point.”

He steals himself, thinks he’s done far more terrifying things in his life, but has he?

“I was in love with you the whole time I was in Korea, but I fell in love with them too. All of them. They were a second family. And…” he hesitates. Peggy squeezes his hands encouragingly. “And Hawkeye was at the center of them all. I loved him, Peg.”

“I know, darling.” His heart is pounding in his ears. Does she understand, though?

“I, uh, I loved him not like I loved you, but just as much.”

There’s silence for a moment and B. J. knows there’s so much more left to say, to clarify, so many things she could think about them that would be wrong, awful, sad. He watches her retreat, her hands are still in his and she hasn’t moved, but her mind is elsewhere for a moment.

“The letters,” he remembers, “the ones I didn’t send, they’re addressed to Hawkeye. When I realized how, um, how I felt about him, I needed to figure it out, to spell it out so it would make sense to me. I didn’t want to hurt you or to put either us in danger and I didn’t think it would be fair to tell anyone about it because we couldn’t- Well, we couldn’t.”

And Peg, bless her heart, looks at him with, not pity exactly, but compassion, maybe. Hurt, too.

“I wish I could honestly say I’m sorry I loved him, Peg, I really do. It makes everything complicated and it’s probably the last thing you want to hear from your husband, but it’s the truth and I owe him too much to lie to myself about how I feel. I owe him the truth, at least.”

“I owe him, too, you know.” There’s steel beneath her words. A resolve that’s new and that no doubt carried her through the times when she was alone with Erin and had to write to him despite having a bad day. “His love for you is what brought you back here. Don’t think I don’t know that.”

“It was you and Erin, too, Peg. You were always in my thoughts, in my prayers, every day.”

“I know that, Beej. But I know you and your big heart.” She brushes her thumbs across his knuckles. “You brought him back, too, you know?”

B. J.’s heart’s in his throat and his eyes are wet because this has been so heavy, this distance between them has been so long, and now and he’s here with her and it’s all out in the open and she doesn’t hate him, he feels it all.

“You still love him, don’t you?”

B. J. nods, watery eyes looking into hers. She seems to make up her mind about something.

“I think you should give him these letters. He ought to know.” 

“Not if it means leaving this family, Peg, that's not-“

“You don’t have to leave. You don’t have to choose him over us. You can have your two families together.”

“I- I don’t know what to say.” There are tears in both their eyes now. He feels himself unraveling. 

“I don’t know how to do this, Peggy. I spent so much time hiding from him. From _you!_ Jesus, I hid from myself, too, who knows for how long.”

“If you want to try, we can figure it out. There’s…a lot to talk about, but BJ, I love you and I already love him, for what it’s worth. I think it’s worth it. If it makes us happier.”

B. J. squeezes her to him, pressing their foreheads together and holding her close. It’s the shedding of layers of shame and loneliness he’d assumed he’d be carrying forever, it undoes him a little.

-

B. J. thinks about mailing the letters individually, partly as a joke and partly as a dramatic gesture. Their first goodbyes were quite the thing to follow up on. He quickly gives up the idea, though, and he’s ready to mail them all together when he comes back from work to find the box of letters open and sitting on the coffee table in the living room. He greets his daughter with kisses and plays with her for a minute before going to the kitchen from where Peg called hello. He finds her leaning on the counter, a letter in hand. It’s not one of hers. There’s a moment of panic where his heart trips a beat, but then he remembers _it’s alright_. She looks up as he corners her and kisses her hello, and he sees that she’s been crying. She doesn’t look sad now, though.

“I didn’t know you’d been so happy while you were over there. With him, I mean.” She’s smiling at him, so it’s not a reproach. B. J. melts and he feels his heart glow, of all things. How did he get so damn lucky?

“I didn’t think about it like that, but yes, at times I was. Never completely, because it was hell and you weren’t there, which is pretty much saying the same thing. Honey, I just didn’t know how to say it.”

“I get it, B. J., I do. I’m just…relieved? That you weren’t completely alone and that you did find joy while you were there. God, there were times I felt guilty for laughing while you were gone!”

“Oh, honey, no, that’s-“

“And for being there for most of Erin’s firsts while you couldn’t be. It was just…so unfair. But this strange, magical man. He made it a bit easier for all of us, didn’t he.”

It’s a truth that resonates so deeply that B. J. doesn’t need to think about it before answering that yes, he did.

So that night, he goes through some of the letters he wrote to Hawkeye with his wife. They read about his heartache and, sometimes, he wants to keep some of them from her because all this time, his pain was private and it’s a lot to let go of at once, but he trusts her. They go to sleep holding each other tight that night, the letters in a box labelled for Crabapple Cove, Maine, accompanied with a last letter, this time signed by Peg as well.

-

 “Dear Hawkeye,

I hope these letters find you well. They’re a bit late, but they got lost in the mail somewhere between Korea and the US of A. Erin says hello and asks when you’ll next visit. She didn’t use those words, but that’s what she means. We all miss you here.

Listen, I wasn’t going to give you these, but I decided to be honest with myself and with the ones I love, now that I can without putting any of us in danger. I’m sorry it took so long. Peg’s the one who convinced me it was time they get to their rightful owner.

Please give us a call when you’re done reading them. We’re waiting by the phone.

Love,

Your dearest friends, B. J. & Peg Hunnicutt”

-

A week later, B. J. gets a phone call from Maine. Hawkeye got the letters. They both talk through their tears, and Hawkeye’s the first one to crack a joke to lighten up the mood, but it falls a bit flat. There’s too much on the line here.

“I didn’t think I’d ever send you those, you know. I’m sorry I couldn’t say anything, couldn’t _do_ anything about it, Hawk. I loved you more than I could say and I understand if it’s too late, but if you feel the same-“

“Beej, of course I do. I- I- I haven’t stopped thinking about you since I left your front porch! I couldn’t have dreamed this, could I? I mean, is this for real, Beej? Because I’ve got my whole heart invested in this and if there’s any chance you regret sending these letters-“

“I don’t regret a single thing I’ve ever done with you, Hawk.”

B. J.’s heart is bursting and he feels halfway out of his body, but he feels the most sane he has since the war began. “Come to California for a little while.”

“I’ll come this week, have Dad take over my appointments. Beej, are you sure about this?”

“Yes, Hawk. You’re family and it’s like missing a limb without you here.”

“You really… God, you really-“. Hawkeye doesn’t seem to be able to get the words out. B. J. gets it. It’s daunting to know that what they’ve been circling around and hiding from each other has finally surfaced and they can finally, finally say it.

“Benjamin Franklin Pierce, by God, I really do love you.” He sounds amazed, and surprised, even to himself. If Hawkeye could see him smile. There’s a chuckle on the other side of the line.

“God, I can hear you smiling. It sounds so good.”

There’s a moment of silence and B. J. knows that they’re both grinning like they used to, supremely delighted by the presence of one another.

“I’ll call you when I get a flight. Pick me up at the airport? I’ll be tall, dark and handsome.” Hawkeye jokes.

“I’ll be the blond bombshell with a 3 year old on his hip and the most beautiful woman on his arm.”

“I can’t wait to see you all. I’m terrified, B. J., but I would run to you if I could.”

“That’s… Yep, that’s about how I feel. We’ll wait for your call.”

When he hangs up, he wipes his eyes with his hand and takes a deep breath, elated, relieved, exhausted. He gets up from the kitchen table turns around to see Peggy leaning in the doorway to the hallway. He reaches out for her and she slips into his arms and he can rest his chin on her head and she can rub his back and it finally begins to sink in that he can have it all. His friend and his wife, the loves of his life, under the same roof.

He doesn’t know what comes next, none of them do, but they’re all very intelligent people and they’ll figure it out. They made it out of a war together, all three of them. They can try for happiness together.


End file.
